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When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think

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Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think

#351

Post by nickagliano »

thundergolfer wrote: post #266
nickagliano wrote: post #259

It's more complicated than, "using AI more and more will cause us to forget how to write." It's just a tool. I like comparing it to something like quizlet (online flash cards), which can be a great study tool, but which people will also misuse and abuse. Instead of studying and taking the online quizzes, people will often just find the right quizlet which has all of the answers to the online quiz. People who are hone…

You say it’s more complicated than PG’d claim, but your “just a tool” narrative is a classic oversimplification of technology’s relationship with man. A tool is an extension of man, and it is not additive as you suggest, even for “talented writers”. A tool interacts with man’s mind and body, and society’s fabric, “adjusting the sense ratios” of man, to use McLuhan’s phrase. “Just a tool” is lazy thinking that is most…

No, I agree with you! I'm not trying to simplify things by saying it's a tool. As you use the tool, it changes you as well. I think the chatbots are particular technology that will have a lot of that effect.

One of my favorite ramblings on this is Wendell Berry's essay on "Why I Am not Going To Buy A Computer".

I'm just saying that there's an obviously bad way to let this tool have an impact on you, and there's a way to use it that won't ruin you.

It's important to be vigilant, and not to abuse GPT-4 and, i.e., replace all of your own writing with AI.

Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think

#352

Post by dsign »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #337
dsign wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just love how recurrent this argument gets. Obviously LLMs are not human brains, and we could be all day listing ways in which the two are different just for the pleasure of it. But when we dig, and rip away all the layers of civilized dialog and cognitive philosophy, what we find at the bottom of the pit is our brains brilliantly doing what evolution wants them to do: to fight for our survival. The core of the arg…

>> So we must fight to death to convince the world they are inferior. That only makes sense if you assume they are superior. In which case, there isn't really anything to discuss because you've obviously already made up your mind and you will take anything anyone says as some desperate attempt to twist the truth for the sake of survival. Which is what many people do on this kind of subject and that's why no more deba…

> That only makes sense if you assume they are superior. In which case, there isn't really anything to discuss because you've obviously already made up your mind and you will take anything anyone says as some desperate attempt to twist the truth for the sake of survival.

:-) I haven't decided anything of the sort. Alas, there is nothing divinely given in me. I'm made of the same matter than you and those computers, and if I can think, so can other arrangements of atoms and molecules. LLMs? Maybe not yet. But the issue is that we are getting closer. Should we dilute ourselves in our own supposed exceptionalism until it's too late and we stop being the masters of our fate?

Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think

#353

Post by passterby »

Last5Digits wrote: post #157
bayindirh wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plato's warning is true, actually. Since I started to write, I remember less and less about the things I have written down, because the brain replaces them with a pointer. However, writing for thinking and writing for storage is two different things, and it activates different parts of the brain. I'm an avid pen and paper user, and using a real pen on a paper allows me to think much more deeply. It regulates thinking…

I know this is HN, but can we please stop drawing these vague parallels between basic programming concepts and the functioning of the human brain? No, the brain does not "replace written information with a pointer". I cannot tell you with complete confidence whether writing stuff down improves recall or diminishes it, but I can tell you that you can construct computer analogies in support of either case. I could posi…

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Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think

#354

Post by nextmove »

Is he referring to writing code or books/essays?

For code I think he's forgetting that the people using ChatGPT to write code for them aren't really good programmers. These are mainly people using frontend frameworks that have horrible documentation and use ChatGPT to help them parse the garbage into something that just works. These people would never learn a functional programming language or any assembly. They simply copy the tech that others are using in order to stay employed. What type of code could these type of people, on their own, without ChatGPT produce that is actually useful for others to read or use?

Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think

#355

Post by passterby »

commandlinefan wrote: post #336
bayindirh wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plato's warning is true, actually. Since I started to write, I remember less and less about the things I have written down, because the brain replaces them with a pointer. However, writing for thinking and writing for storage is two different things, and it activates different parts of the brain. I'm an avid pen and paper user, and using a real pen on a paper allows me to think much more deeply. It regulates thinking…

> the brain replaces them with a pointer. And, unfortunately, as you get older and memory starts to fill up, the pointers get overwritten.

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Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think

#357

Post by ghaff »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #348
ghaff wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key is probably explaining/creating something in a way that doesn't have a lot of latitude for just glossing over the details. I'm not sure long-form writing is especially better than giving a presentation to an audience or working through a problem/creating an artifact of some sort/etc. The key is that you can't just read something and go "Yeah yeah I totally get it." Though I suspect some outputs can be easier…

You make me think of the anecdote about the professor who had half the class graded for making one amazingly beautiful piece of pottery and the other half graded by total weight of the work they created. In the end, those graded by weight had nicer pieces as it involved more practice with producing something.

In the case of writing/presenting/many things, there's definitely a case for doing something regularly even if a lot of that output is pretty routine and pedestrian. So there's probably a limit to the degree to which you can automate away the routine stuff and still expect to parachute in and produce something killer on demand every few years when you need to.

Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think

#359

Post by JustBreath »

Amusing Ourselves to Death is a great book on this idea that the medium changes you.

TL;DR: When a disruptive technology comes along (books, radio, television, the Internet, now AI) there's an intrinsic shift in how we think and how information is communicated.

For example with books there is generally the assumption that you have read the chapters in order and thus there is no need to give you a recap with each chapter.

However, in television, you can make no such assumption and so at the beginning of every episode they have to remind you what happened before because it's possible either you didn't watch the previous episodes or it's been a long time since then.

Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think

#360

Post by jiggywiggy »

nashashmi wrote: post #311
dalbasal wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's better to think of these as different, rather than superior... especially given our times' proliferation of mediums with differing cognitive implications. Is Twitter > books? Is HN > podcasts? Every medium has its tendencies... positive, negative and complicated. We don't actually choose between them. It's useful to keep an eye on losses, not just gains. Oral traditions, for example, naturally evolve and…

> This is, largely, the story of monotheist religion. This is largely the story of religions, especially old pagan religions. Myths and folklore came about. The moment when religions went scriptural, the message became firm and technical. And gave rise to law as a study.

Not really, that only really happened in the reformation for Christianity.

The romans were already pretty good at law.

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